The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has proposed new rules on data encryption and EHR interoperability in its newly released Stage 2 meaningful-use guidelines.

Although
new federal guidelines on electronic health record (EHR) use bring few changes
for IT vendors, doctors and hospitals will need to take note of some changes
regarding encryption, data sharing and electronic entry of care directions.
The
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released its Notice of
Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) for Stage 2 requirements governing meaningful use of
EHRs and published the document in the Federal
Register.

Under
the 2009 Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health
(HITECH) Act, eligible health care professionals can qualify for government
incentives if they implement "meaningful use" of EHRs.

Health
care providers now have an extra year to meet Stage 1 criteria. All EHR
applications must be certified under Stage 2 by 2014 for providers to receive
incentives from the federal government. Stage 2 rules are now in a comment
period for six months.
CMS
announced the Stage 2 rules on Feb. 23 at the Healthcare
Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference in Las Vegas.
In
Stage 2, CMS has added guidelines regarding secure messaging and encrypting
data at rest.
Vendors'
current EHR applications can handle these security requirements, said
Erica Drazen, managing director for the Global Institute for Emerging
Healthcare Practices at health care consulting firm CSC. "Encryption for
data at rest was a new requirement under privacy, so that may be something that
vendors need to be responding to, but in general it's not going to be such a
huge change for the vendor community," Drazen told eWEEK.
Incentive
guidelines will need to be structured to encourage providers and IT vendors to
share data, according to Dr. Wendy Whittington, chief medical officer of health
care IT services vendor Anthelio
Healthcare Solutions.
"While
the emphasis on health information exchange highlighted in the rules provides
hope, an important question remainshow is this financially sustainable?"
Whittington said in a statement. "The document briefly acknowledges that
this has been a problem in the past, but it doesn't explain how we're going to
overcome the issue and align incentives in a way that makes health care
providers and vendors more interested in sharing."

Brian T. Horowitz is a freelance technology and health writer as well as a copy editor. Brian has worked on the tech beat since 1996 and covered health care IT and rugged mobile computing for eWEEK since 2010. He has contributed to more than 20 publications, including Computer Shopper, Fast Company, FOXNews.com, More, NYSE Magazine, Parents, ScientificAmerican.com, USA Weekend and Womansday.com, as well as other consumer and trade publications. Brian holds a B.A. from Hofstra University in New York.